L'inseguimento
by Cap'n Pirate Monkey
Summary: "He forgets what it is like to love one's quarry, to fight for anything greater than the cold, bloody thrill of it. He's not sure he wants to remember." ...In which Ocelot comes to the rescue. On horseback. A snippet of speculation fic based around Ocelot's appearance in the first MGS5 trailer. No doubt this will all be proven wrong when the game comes out.


it should make him happy, this; having tracked him to the ends of the earth, after years of false leads and insubstantial rumour. It should make him proud. It very nearly does, but the man he finds is barely Jack at all. He is dust and bone and old blood, bandages half-shed like old skin. He is fever-sweat and crude prosthetics and mad, staring eye. He moves as if he has forgotten how, stumbling clumsily to the ground at Grishka's approach. And so Adam's moment of glory leaves a bitter taste on his tongue, like swallowing ashes, and he thinks he would gladly abandon every dream of heroism he has ever had if only that pitiful thing before him would stand of its own volition.

He doesn't. He can't. Adam slips from Grishka's back, braces his knees against the impact (he's getting older, too – grey, weathered, thinner in the face, bones sharp like piano wire.) Jack starts a little at the sound, and he looks up, holds his head high until his can see, through one glazed eye, the face of his enemy.

"Adam," Jack says. His voice is rough with disuse.

In the intervening years it seems Adam has forgotten a great many things, despite EVA's best efforts to retain something of the boy he was, and the man he became prior to Jack's absence. But nine years is a long time, and anger and fear are not companionable emotions, and after a while a man forgets how to care. Becomes selfish. Becomes comfortable in solitary confinement, ignoring EVA's insistent doorbell-ringing and invitations to a dinner neither of them will enjoy. He forgets what it is like to love one's quarry, to fight for anything greater than the cold, bloody thrill of it. He's not sure he wants to remember.

But he does. He remembers all of it the instant Jack says his name. It hits him like a bucket of icewater. He doesn't flinch. He's grown good at that.

"We should go," Adam says. "Can you stand?" He reaches for Jack, crouches beside him and it's the most normal thing in the world, this physicality, the too-hot sensation of his bare skin and the smell of him, sweat and blood and something else, something alien and medicinal. Drugs, perhaps; Jack's pupil is black and vast and flits back and forth in the dusty darkness beyond Grishka as if there are things moving there, things Adam cannot see. Together, they work Jack to his feet. He's unsteady, formerly taut musculature weak now, shot through with more bone than Adam has seen even on the thin and hungry boys in Groznyj Grad. But he stands, and does not fall, and even that seems a small victory, given the circumstances.

Getting him onto Grishka's back is another matter entirely. Grishka is spooked by him; perhaps the animal can sense, as Adam can, that there is something terribly amiss about this man. Like he has lost more than just his arm. He can't worry about that now, though. The enemy will be upon them if they don't move fast.

"How did you find me?" Jack says, as Ocelot pulls himself up, slipping with ease into the saddle (he's still somewhat lithe – he looks after his body, bullet wounds notwithstanding)

"Followed a lead," Adam says. "That man, Miller…It took a long time. I'm sorry." He doesn't say anything more. Jack's no longer listening.

Grishka does move fast; the weight of two full-grown men barely seems to trouble him, and as they move (steady at first, mindful of Jack's condition) it seems to Adam that the culmination of nine years' work should, by rights, involve more fanfare. Grishka picks up speed; Jack wavers, but holds on. One hand is bunched in the worn leather of Adam's coat, the other pressed against Grishka's flank. It's a precarious position, but Jack is almost unnaturally resilient, and that will have to be enough for now.

They are deep into the forest when the first jeep catches up to them. It crashes through the undergrowth, headlights blazing, and Grishka starts at the sudden roar of engines but does not stop running; Adam speaks gently to the animal in Russian, coaxes him, and it almost works. Almost, until John snatches the rifle from the holster at Adam's back and lets off a volley of bullets.

"What the _hell_…" Adam hisses. He tugs sharply at Grishka's reins, quelling the animal's urge to run wild.

"…on fire, it can't be…" Jack's muttering to himself, barely audible beneath the clatter of hooves and the jeep's wheels crushing branches to mulch. He raises the rifle, fires another shot. Even in his delirium he's blisteringly accurate; the bullet pings off the jeep's windshield, causing its occupants to duck and veer, if only for a second or two. "Adam…do you see it? What the hell is it?"

"It's a jeep, and if you keep shooting at it you're going to get us thrown off this damn horse." He has no idea if Jack hears him or understands him, but the shooting stops, though he can see the rifle in the corner of his eye, a black shape on the periphery. Jack's muttering again, about how that's a damn funny looking jeep and Adam swears, though he can't be sure, that Jack says something about a _unicorn_ (but that's got to be wrong, hasn't it? A word misheard in among all the chaos?) And he realises then that he's not just feverish, he's _burning_, and it takes all of Adam's restraint and faith in logic to stop him from turning around to see if he's actually on fire. Jack is sick. He knew he would be; a man does not spend nine years in a coma and emerge in perfect health. But this. This is no sickness Adam has ever seen before. This is not organic; he'd bet his guns on that.

Whatever they did to him – it had better be reversible. Otherwise heads will roll. They will regardless. It's not the only way to get things done, but Adam finds it satisfying, to cleanse every trace. To not just catch his prey but destroy them. Finding Jack seems only to have sharpened that instinct. This man, this man is _his_, in ways nobody else can comprehend; people think them lovers, partners, teammates, brothers, soulmates, and the truth is none of those things but something in the middle, something where all of those nouns converge and something other is born. And he is Jack's in turn. This is a bond perhaps only EVA understands, and only then because she is there too, caught in the pull of their combined gravity, and they circle one another like satellites, endlessly, simultaneously together and apart while others float in and out of their lives like so much cosmic debris.

But he doesn't actually think any of this, because just as the jeep brakes suddenly and violently and becomes a pinprick of light in the black distance of the forest they come to a bridge. The bridge is concrete, and a sudden burst of white light obscures what's on the other side. Adam pulls Grishka to a sharp halt but it's too late, they're on the bridge, and below is grey and empty, and the horse knows a split second before Adam does because he rears back, forelegs raised high into the night sky, and as the ground beneath them disintegrates and the stink of cordite floods Adam's senses - as Jack slips into the grey and Adam falls after him - for the first time in nine years it is not his failure that hurts but the knowledge that this might truly be the last time he ever sees Jack. They fall, and Adam whispers his apology over and over though it won't change anything; poor Grishka is lost, and Jack, and as dust fills his open mouth he wonders if this could have gone any other way.

"I'm sorry," he says.

And the world is darkness.


End file.
